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Thursday, August 27, 2009

A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

This was the first time since join the Daring Bakers that I was not completely pleased with the results. The Dobos Torte tasted very good, which was not a surprise. White sponge and lots of chocolate ganache, how bad can that taste? My problem was with the presentation, and it probably had a lot to do with my decision to cut the recipe in half (lesson learned).

Since it's only the 2 of us, and I was recently told by my doctor to decrease my sugar intake , I thought I would make just a small cake for us to share. The problem of making small amounts is that if something goes wrong, you don't have much back up, and that is what happen to my sponge cake. It all went well for the first batch, but the second one stuck to the baking paper and I couldn't remove it. So I ended up with 1/4 of the sponge cake from the recipe. That is the reason you only see a small slice of my "torta"....

The chocolate buttercream was easy to make and tasted great, the only thing is that it melts pretty fast so it has be kept in the fridge. Even after the layers were assembled, I had to keep it refrigerated or the layers would slide off and melt.

A typical Dobos Torte is topped with a caramel-covered sponge layer, normally sliced into wedges. Since I was already running short of cake layers, I decided to skip the caramel altogether.

I ended up with a multi layered mini torta that tasted great (just like store bought actually), but didn't exactly look that attractive., specially if you think of Dobos Torte as a beautiful, tall cake with a crunchy and shinny caramel topping.... Mine wasn't any of that....

Although Dobos is a wonderful dessert, certainly elegant (when made properly), I don't think I will be making this again anytime soon. Perhaps it is a little too rich for my taste, but as a true Daring Baker, I am happy that I tried it.

For more beautiful photos of Dobos Torte (and too see how they are really suppose to look like), head over to the Daring Kitchen. And for the complete recipe for this particular Dobos, click here or here.

After you mentioned you had issues, I just had to come check it out. I think yours looks lovely and you are lucky you didn't try the caramel layer. I wasted two layers of my cake because of problems with the caramel. And like you, although I liked this, I don't think it was something I will be making again any time soon. Plus, I'm not sure I should be eating that much butter all that often.

I had a problem with the presentation too, as I rushed two of my tortes and they just looked, well, sloppy. However, I think your mini torte looks lovely, especially the distinct layers and creamy frosting :) Nicely done!